Watch an animation that shows how to turn a conventional community into an edible city. Learn how to transform unproductive spaces into agricultural landscapes that help fight obesity and reduce food deserts.

An important part of the solution to unsustainable agriculture is growing food where people live, converting urban deserts into living land that can hold on to the water, build carbon-sequestering soil, and provide a large fraction of our food needs.

Renewable energy could fully power a large electric grid 99.9 percent of the time by 2030 at costs comparable to today’s electricity expenses, according to new research by the University of Delaware and Delaware Technical Community College. A well-designed combination of wind power, solar power and storage in batteries and fuel cells would nearly always exceed electricity demands while keeping costs low, the scientists found.

“These results break the conventional wisdom that renewable energy is too unreliable and expensive,” said co-author Willett Kempton, professor in the School of Marine Science and Policy in UD’s College of Earth, Ocean and Environment. “The key is to get the right combination of electricity sources and storage—which we did by an exhaustive search—and to calculate costs correctly.”

Unlike other studies, the model focused on minimizing costs instead of the traditional approach of matching generation to electricity use. The researchers found that generating more electricity than needed during average hours—in order to meet needs on high-demand but low-wind power hours—would be cheaper than storing excess power for later high demand.

“Aiming for 90 percent or more renewable energy in 2030, in order to achieve climate change targets of 80 to 90 percent reduction of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the power sector, leads to economic savings,” the authors observe.

Bad news, Earthlings: It may be possible for everyone on the planet to live a “good” life. It may also be possible for humans to live within their environmental means. But if present trends continue, there will be no way for both of these things to happen at the same time.

Right now, there's not a single country on Earth that provides its people a good, sustainable life. Not one. In fact, there aren't even any that come close.

In general, the more social benefits available in a country, the more likely that country is living beyond its environmental means. The reverse is true as well — countries that operate sustainably tend to offer fewer social benefits.

Although the overall picture may look grim, the researchers saw some hopeful signs. For example, there were a few countries that managed to score well for education and life satisfaction while keeping their CO2 emissions way below the global median level (that is, the point at which half the countries were emitting more and half were emitting less). This discovery "demonstrates that much more carbon-efficient provisioning systems are possible," O'Neill and his colleagues wrote.

Likewise, the data suggest that the nutrition, income, sanitation and electricity needs of each and every person on Earth could be met "without significantly exceeding planetary boundaries" for sustainability, they wrote.

In theory, wealthy nations could cut way back on their resource use while maintaining their achievements on the social front. Some straightforward first steps include "switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy, producing products with longer lifetimes, reducing unnecessary waste, shifting from animal to crop products, and investing in new technologies," the researchers wrote.

And in a future world "with very different social arrangements or technologies," there could be a different equation for converting natural resources into human well-being that allows everyone to enjoy all aspects of the good life, O'Neill said.

"Is this realistic?" he said. "I hope so, because the alternative could be environmental catastrophe."

For decades, food production has been all about efficiency and lowering cost. We now see what this approach has brought us — diminishing food quality, skyrocketing disease statistics and a faltering ecosystem. Regenerative agriculture that makes use of cover crops, no-till and herbivore grazing actually contributes to improved soil health and fertility.

An interesting study that highlights the importance of grazing animals found that reindeer grazing on shrubs on the Arctic tundra actually help combat abnormal weather patterns on a global scale by increasing surface albedo, the amount of solar energy being reflected back into space.1 Overall, it’s become quite clear that regenerative agriculture is the only truly viable way forward, as factory farming is making everything worse.

Indeed, around the world, farmers are waking up to the many adverse effects of industrialized agriculture. While chemicals and machines have allowed farms to expand and increase production, there’s growing awareness about how these strategies harm the soil, ecology and, ultimately, human health. According to data from the University of Michigan’s Global Change Program, a whopping 96 percent of the soil erosion in North America is caused by food production.

"The study, entitled Global Energy System Based on 100% Renewable Energy Power Sector, was released at the COP23 UN climate summit in Bonn, and makes the claim that not only is this transition feasible—but would actually end up costing less than business-as-usual too. According to the study's modeling, the total levelized cost of energy would come down to 52 euros per MWh by 2050, compared to 70 euros today. And the transition would create 36 million jobs in the process too."

"This isn't, of course, the first time we've heard claims that 100% renewable energy is possible. But it's yet another data set suggesting a path forward. In fact, with favorable policy support like phasing out fossil fuel subsidies (yes!), promoting research and investment into renewables, and moving from emissions trading to a tax on carbon, the reports' authors claim that the transition could be complete even earlier than 2050."

"If we have any hope of preventing absolute civilization challenge and catastrophe, then we need to be bringing down carbon emissions with incredible rapidity, far faster than it can happen just via normal economic transition," McKibben said.

While entirely possible from an economic standpoint as the new research shows, the political feasibility of the transition is another story. "That depends entirely on whether we can build movements large enough to break the power of the fossil fuel industry that holds us where we are," said McKibben. "To go further what we need are many people in the streets demanding action and pushing governments to move much, much faster than they're currently contemplating."

"There’s a new study out which presents a series of 20 steps that can be taken to naturally mitigate the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Taken together, the effect on carbon levels would be equivalent to stopping the use of fossil fuels entirely."

"We show that “natural climate solutions” (NCS) can provide over one-third of the cost-effective climate mitigation needed between now and 2030 to stabilize warming to below 2 °C. Alongside aggressive fossil fuel emissions reductions, NCS offer a powerful set of options for nations to deliver on the Paris Climate Agreement while improving soil productivity, cleaning our air and water, and maintaining biodiversity."

Daniel LaLiberte's insight:

Of course we need to do both: end the burning of fossil fuels and regreen the Earth to lower carbon levels and restore the balance.

By 2030, you probably won’t own a car, but you may get a free trip with your morning coffee. Transport-As-A-Service will use electric vehicles and will upend two trillion-dollar industries. It’s the death spiral for cars.

The report, by RethinkX, an independent think tank that focuses on technology-driven disruption and its implications across society, says this stunning and radical [shift] will be driven entirely by economics, and will overcome the current desire for individual car ownership, starting first in the big cities and then spreading to the suburbs and regional areas.

This disruption will have enormous implications across the transportation and oil industries, decimating entire portions of their value chains, causing oil demand and prices to plummet, and destroying trillions of dollars in investor value, not to mention the value of used cars. At the same time it will create trillions of dollars in new business opportunities, consumer surplus and GDP growth.

Seba admits that his forecasts are hard to digest. But what he sees in the transition to autonomous EVs from privately owned petrol cars is the same he has seen for all other major transitions: what he calls the 10x opportunity cost. It happened with the printing press, it happened with the first Model T – it cost the same as a carriage and two horses, but offered 10x the horsepower.

“Every time we have had a ten x change in technology, we had a disruption. This is going to be no different.” And that change, he says, will happen on day one of level 5 autonomous EVs obtaining regulatory approval. “Basically, the day that autonomous vehicles are regulatory accepted, transport-as-a-service will be 10x cheaper than cost of new vehicles,” he says. And four times cheaper than the cost of already owned vehicles.

Polydome is a revolutionary approach to greenhouse agriculture that offers the possibility of commercial scale, net-zero-impact food production.

The Polydome system strategically interweaves a wide variety of crops and animals, taking advantage of every inch of the greenhouse while eliminating the need for synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.

It is estimated that by using Polydome, even cities as densely populated as New York City could provide the majority of their own food supply using available roof space. A less dense city like Rotterdam could provide an estimated 80% of its food needs using only 3% of its surface area.

• In major industrialized countries of the Western World, renewables have a high degree of acceptance with approval ratings well above 80% in most cases.

• Expansion targets for renewable energies are also strongly supported. This applies to European Union member states, Japan and, depending on the costs, also to the US, Canada and Australia.

The reasons behind the high acceptance levels are the environmental benefits and perceived sustainability. The acceptance seems to be little influenced by the energy policy of the country and the expansion of renewable energies. So countries with a relatively low level of development have a similarly high level of acceptance as countries with a high share of renewable electricity.

Daniel LaLiberte's insight:

Almost everyone wants renewable energy. So we should be able to move very fast toward the goal of 100% renewable energy, as long as the powers that be don't slow us down?

Vincent Callebaut unveiled designs for a self-sustaining urban utopia in India that not only grows organic food, but also produces more energy than it consumes.

Designed in collaboration with agroecologist Amlankusum, Hyperions was created to achieve two major objectives: energy decentralization and food deindustrialization. The result combines urban agriculture, bio-based materials, and dense mixed-use planning into a self-sufficient development. The project comprises six 36-story connected towers built from cross-laminated timber sourced locally and sustainably from a Delhi forest. Reinforced with steel, the timber towers sit atop a steel and concrete substructure engineered for earthquake resistance and to take advantage of the earth’s thermal inertia for stable natural heating and cooling. The project is designed to achieve a net-zero environmental footprint with a recycling system that takes care of gray water, black water, and food waste on site. Energy for the buildings is generated via wind turbines and photovoltaic systems.

We all know the science. The United States and the world as a whole must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent or more by 2050 in order to significantly reduce the risks posed by unabated climate change.

We would need to invest an average of about $320 billion a year from 2020 to 2050, but the benefits would far outweigh these costs.

Renewable energy has reached an important milestone. The World Economic Forum (WEF) has determined that in many parts of the world, solar energy is now the same price or even cheaper than fossil fuels for the first time.

The WEF highlighted how the unsubsidized LCOE for utility-scale solar photovoltaic—which was not competitive even five years ago—has declined at a 20 percent compounded annual rate, "making it not only viable but also more attractive than coal in a wide range of countries."

The next few decades will see a profound and all-encompassing energy transformation throughout the world. Whereas society now derives the great majority of its energy from fossil fuels, by the end of the century we will depend primarily on renewable sources like solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal power.

Fossil fuels are on their way out one way or another, and nuclear energy is a dead end. That leaves renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and biomass, to shoulder the burden of powering future society. While it is probably an oversimplification to say that people in the not-too-distant-future will inhabit a 100 percent renewably powered world, it is worth exploring what a complete, or nearly complete, shift in our energy systems would actually mean. Because energy is implicit not only in everything we do but also in the built environment around us (which requires energy for its construction, maintenance, and disposal/decommissioning), it is in effect the wellspring of our existence.

No country in the world currently meets the basic needs of its citizens at a globally sustainable level of resource use. The purpose of this interactive website is to foster discussions about the meaning of a good life for all, and what it would mean for nations to thrive within planetary boundaries.

"In their paper, published as a manuscript this week in Renewable Energy, the researchers propose three different methods of providing consistent power among all energy sectors - transportation; heating and cooling; industry; and agriculture, forestry and fishing - in 20 world regions encompassing 139 countries after all sectors have been converted to 100 percent clean, renewable energy."

"Based on these results, I can more confidently state that there is no technical or economic barrier to transitioning the entire world to 100 percent clean, renewable energy with a stable electric grid at low cost," said Mark Jacobson

Overall, the researchers found that the cost per unit of energy - including the cost in terms of health, climate and energy - in every scenario was about one quarter what it would be if the world continues on its current energy path. This is largely due to eliminating the health and climate costs of fossil fuels.

"One of the biggest challenges facing energy systems based entirely on clean, zero-emission wind, water and solar power is to match supply and demand with near-perfect reliability at reasonable cost," said Mark Delucchi, co-author of the paper and a research scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. "Our work shows that this can be accomplished, in almost all countries of the world, with established technologies."

“In doing so, we hope to inspire positive changes in Perth, which will have wide ranging social, economic and environmental benefits for everyone.”

Perthshire South and Kinross-shire MSP Roseanna Cunningham – who is also the cabinet secretary for the environment, climate change and land reform at Holyrood – said: “Re-using and recycling more, and making the most of the food we buy and grow, is something we can all do to reduce waste and keep products and materials in high-value use for longer.

“In Scotland we are working towards ambitious targets on waste, with 70 per cent recycled or prepared for re-use by 2025, and a commitment to reduce food waste by a third by the same year.”

SNP politician Ms Cunningham added: “Action from households, communities and businesses is crucial to achieve this. That is why I am delighted to announced this funding which will help Scotland’s zero waste towns come up with new and innovative ideas to bring these targets within reach.”

"A study produced by advocacy group Transport & Environment says electric cars produce fewer emissions everywhere in the European Union, even coal-dependent Poland."

Another study, "Fuel Sources for Electricity in the Individual Countries of the World and the Consequent Emissions from Driving Electric Vehicles, finds that electric cars produce fewer emissions than their gas powered equivalent in every country in the world, even Botswana and Gibraltar which produce 100% of their electricity from coal and oil respectively."

"We need a multi-pronged approach that goes something like this:

1) Switch all vehicles to electric drivetrains.

2) Clean up the electrical grid so they on renewables.

3) Encourage the use of smaller vehicles with only as much range as is realistically needed.

4) Promote ridesharing and alternatives to car ownership, so manufacturing emissions are spread over a greater number of passenger miles.

5) Rethink planning and transportation so that cars aren't necessary."

Daniel LaLiberte's insight:

We are crossing the threshold of "electric vehicles are greener" even with dirty (fossil fuel) electric power, so if we factor in health costs, jobs, etc, electric vehicles are not only greener but cheaper. We should soon be buying nothing but electric vehicles, and plugin hybrids during the transition.

The only question is when clean energy will fully power the country, no longer ‘if.’ And the loud and clear answer we’re pushing forward is: Now.

The challenge before us is awesome. But the path to a clean energy transformation is rapidly emerging. Let’s take stock of the progress we can achieve:

#1: States can and will lead the way—and we’re pushing them at every step. Much of our nation’s energy policy is crafted at the state level by public utility commissions. Utility commissioners decide whether customers like you will be forced to pay for power from a dirty coal plant, or benefit from money-saving energy efficiency programs, or generate your own electricity affordably with rooftop solar.

#2: The market momentum of clean energy is on our side—and likely unstoppable. For power companies, it’s getting harder and harder to justify continued investments in fossil fuels when clean energy solutions are available, affordable and scalable now. Utility-scale wind and solar power are now cheaper per kilowatt-hour than gas, coal, or oil.

#3: People want change—and our movement is gaining power. Public concern about climate change is at the highest point in three decades, and big majorities of Americans want to see action. Our challenge is to channel this broad support into bold action. But we’re not starting from scratch. In communities across the country, people have been building power to challenge fossil fuel companies and plant the roots of a brighter future.

Global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions could be reduced by as much as 70% by 2050, and completely phased out by 2060, all while providing a net positive economic outlook that could benefit up to trillions of dollars in economic benefits and GDP.

Unsurprisingly, energy efficiency measures and renewable energy capacity additions are expected to be the primary drivers of emissions reductions.

The report also highlighted a larger series of “deep transformation of energy production and consumption” that needs to occur by 2050, including:

* Nearly 95% of electricity would need to be low-carbon by then, compared with about a third today, led by renewables.

* 7 out of every 10 new cars would need to be electric, compared with 1 in 100 today.

* The entire existing building stock would need to be retrofitted and the CO2 intensity of the industrial sector would need to drop by 80% below today’s levels.

* Fossil fuels, in particular natural gas, would still be needed in 2050, and would account for 40% of energy demand, around half of today’s level

* $3.5 trillion in energy-sector investments would be needed on average each year until 2050, which is around twice current levels of investment

Daniel LaLiberte's insight:

We can do better than this, and we probably need to. Why should renewable energy deployment slow down after 2030? Why not continue the trend and eliminate carbon dioxide emissions 100% by 2050? Why not accelerate the transition and finish in 15 years? Since we save money and lives as we switch over to 100% renewable energy, we should do it as fast as feasible, as soon as possible.

Today's linear ‘take, make, dispose’ economic model relies on large quantities of cheap, easily accessible materials and energy, and is a model that is reaching its physical limits. A circular economy is an attractive and viable alternative that businesses have already started exploring today.

A circular economy is restorative and regenerative by design, and aims to keep products, components, and materials at their highest utility and value at all times. The concept distinguishes between technical and biological cycles. As envisioned by the originators, a circular economy is a continuous positive development cycle that preserves and enhances natural capital, optimizes resource yields, and minimizes system risks by managing finite stocks and renewable flows. It works effectively at every scale.

Re-thinking Progress: The Circular Economy

There's a world of opportunity to re-think and re-design the way we make stuff. 'Re-Thinking Progress' explores how through a change in perspective we can re-design the way our economy works - designing products that can be 'made to be made again' and powering the system with renewable energy.

We don't just need to reduce all consumption. We need to convert bad consumption into good consumption by ultimately recycling all waste into new products, powering it all with 100% renewable energy. That's what the Circular Economy is all about.

Climate change will be the world’s biggest challenge over the next decade, according to a global survey of [5000] young people carried out by Masdar, the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company.

Post-Millennials also made clear their appetite for a stronger say on sustainability, with eight in ten (83%) saying governments need to listen more to young people about the issue. A similar number (80%) believe current leaders have not done enough to protect the environment, and it is up to their generation to build a more sustainable future.

They think government and the private sector share responsibility for developing clean technology (81%), but they expect more government investment in renewable energy (84%).

Interestingly, Post-Millennials in the frontier states surveyed are the most likely to believe that all countries have a shared responsibility to adopt renewable energy and clean technologies, rather than it being the main duty of wealthy countries, with 73% taking this view.

Frontier nations are also the most optimistic about the adoption of renewable energy in their country, with 83% saying that their country will have made significant progress during their lifetime.

There are many places in China that are “worst-case scenarios” of the Industrial Age and its wastes. It is no wonder that many Chinese citizens are wide awake to solutions. A new survey (by Ipsos) shows that 96% of Chinese urbanites believe “green power” could help. Of course, it will. Renewable energy can turn cities around.

The good news is that change is possible at this time in China, and it is occurring. An earlier post on CleanTechnica, “The Latest Trends In China’s Continuing Renewable Energy Revolution,” reports that China is working to remedy its many environmental problems. “China has made strategic choices favoring renewable over fossil fuels that are still not widely understood or appreciated,” John A. Mathews wrote.

Seba believes that all new road vehicles—buses, cars, vans, trucks etc—will be entirely electric by 2030. [His video says by 2025.] That's a pretty astounding prediction. Made even more astounding because he's not talking about one country—he's talking about the entire world.

But Seba's predictions may not be as crazy as you'd think. Pointing to the much touted example of horses versus cars in New York City, and to the absurd underestimates of cell phone adoption rates in the late eighties, Seba argues that insiders almost always miss technological disruptions of this scale.

Daniel LaLiberte's insight:

Electric vehicles have been doubling every year for several years already. There were over 1 million electric vehicles in 2016 and there are about 1.2 billion cars in the world total. So if we double 1 million just 10 times, we will reach 1 billion. Also note that cars last only about 8 years on average, at least those with internal combustion engines. So it looks to me that almost ALL cars will be electric within 10 years, because most will be new by then anyway.

It’s easy for the concepts of Cradle to Cradle design and a circular economy to become shorthand for recycling, but both are much more complex than that. As currency in a circular economy, Cradle to Cradle (C2C) products are sustainably manufactured, with safe ingredients, that can be perpetually recycled – all of which are critical to the approach.

To advance toward a more circular economy, product manufacturers and users must ask not only what happens to a product at the end of its useful life, but what went into that product: technical and biological nutrients, energy, water, labor; it requires a complex, holistic approach.

ADELE PETERS 05.25.16 6:00 AM "If you live inside one of the houses in a new neighborhood being built in an Amsterdam suburb, your dining room might be next to an indoor vegetable garden. Outside, you'll have another seasonal garden. And down the street, almost everything you eat will be grown in high-tech vertical farms. "

"The neighborhood will be the first ReGen Village, a new type of community designed to be fully self-sufficient, growing its own food, making its own energy, and handling its own waste in a closed loop."

"We're really looking at a global scale," he says. "We are redefining residential real-estate development by creating these regenerative neighborhoods, looking at first these greenfield pieces of farmland where we can produce more organic food, more clean water, more clean energy, and mitigate more waste than if we just left that land to grow organic food or do permaculture there."

RegenVillages, which is a spin-off company of Stanford University, is working on a pilot development of 25 homes in Almere, Netherlands, beginning this summer, with the aim of integrating local energy production (using biogas, solar, geothermal, and other modalities), along with intensive food production methods (vertical farming, aquaponics and aeroponics, permaculture, and others) and 'closed-loop' waste-to-resource systems, along with intelligent water and energy management systems.

"We're really looking at a global scale. We are redefining residential real-estate development by creating these regenerative neighborhoods, looking at first these greenfield pieces of farmland where we can produce more organic food, more clean water, more clean energy, and mitigate more waste than if we just left that land to grow organic food or do permaculture there." - James Ehrlich, CEO of ReGen Villages

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